


Beyond

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:29:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7258210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a quick follow-up to Justice League #50, and while I don't normally write stories that connect with specific storylines, I couldn't resist this one, for obvious BatLantern-y reasons. So here you go: a good old-fashioned post-ep, in which Hal finds his courage, and Bruce finds something better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was because Clark’s first instinct was always to celebration. 

There was little to celebrate, of course. They had survived, and not much better; both Myrina and Darkseid would return, and Bruce did not fool himself that what they had experienced was anything but a foretaste of what was yet to come. And if he had wanted to fool himself, the chair would not let him. He knew that the others assumed his time in the chair had been dream-like, a nightmare of which he recalled little. In fact he remembered all of it, though it had been too much for his brain to process, to take in, to comprehend at the time. Trying to understand everything he had seen and known in the chair – and was it days he had been there? Weeks? Or only a few minutes? If nothing else, he now understood viscerally what before he had known only intellectually, about the meaningless of time and the pedantic illusion of measuring it. But trying to understand what he had seen and known in the chair was like revealing a spacecraft to a thirteenth-century villager: there was no available framework to understand what he was seeing, and his brain had ached from it, had threatened to split in two from the weight of it.

But Clark wanted to celebrate. He wanted to celebrate not just the temporary defeat of Darkseid – Bruce would not allow them to call the defeat anything but temporary – but his new apartment, larger and more spacious than his old one, and with a balcony overlooking the Metropolis skyline. A balcony he was overpaying for, of course. 

“It is a nice view,” Bruce conceded, studying it in the sunset. 

“Isn’t it? It was kind of lucky, that this unit opened up when it did. Fireplace too, did you see?” 

He smiled; Clark’s enthusiasm was infectious. “You can see the point where the earth’s atmosphere bleeds into space whenever you want to,” Bruce said. “Remind me why downtown Metropolis is so fascinating?”

“Because this view, I earned.” Clark was regarding it with satisfaction, a frosty beer in his hand, and Bruce thought he had never seen him look happier. Behind the glass door onto the balcony, he caught sight of Diana, watching them, and Bruce glanced at her, sharing a quiet moment of bemusement at Clark’s enjoyment of such a simple pleasure. 

“We still have a lot to talk about,” Bruce said.

“I know. And we will. We’ll have time to unpack everything that happened, and everything you learned in the chair. But a break for just one night won’t kill any of us.”

“I think we’ve just seen how easy we all are to kill, Clark.”

“It was an expression. As in, please try not to kill my party. One night of joy, all right? What the—did Barry just set that hot platter down without a pad? How can a forensic scientist not understand that granite is heat sensitive, for the love of—” Clark wrenched back the door, storming toward the kitchen, and Hal ducked out onto the balcony.

“What’s he in a twist about?”

“His countertops,” Bruce said. “Probably none of us are going to live out the year, but rest easy, the thermal coating on Clark’s granite countertops will survive.”

“Barry made nachos, if you want to come inside.”

“Barry cooked?”

“Yeah, he’s busy impressing Jessica.”

“Ah,” Bruce said. 

“You don’t approve?” Hal shut the door firmly behind him, and came to lean against the railing with Bruce. 

“What do you know of her?”

“Of Jessica? Come on, don’t be your paranoid self. Jessica’s bad ass as fuck, and she just gave her life for Barry’s. You wanna drag Jessica, you’re gonna have to do it someplace else.”

“Technically, she didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t give her life for Barry’s. She gave Volthoom’s.”

“Yeah well, tell that to Barry.” Hal nodded back at the kitchen, where they could see Barry leaning earnestly toward Jessica, nodding at something she was saying. He was looking at her like she had maybe discovered a fifth law of thermodynamics, which come to think of it she just might have. 

“Hmph,” Bruce said, watching them. 

“Eloquent as always, Spooky.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t have reservations about her becoming a Lantern. One foolishly rash act does not equip one to wield that kind of power. What do we know about the effect Volthoom really had on her? What guarantee do we have that he is gone?”

Hal plucked at the label on his beer. “I dunno, Bruce, what guarantee do we have about any of it? And yeah, I was as shocked as you when the ring chose her. But since my whole life is kind of built around the idea of trusting the Lantern force, I’m going to say the ring knows what it’s doing. Are you skeptical about Jessica, or just skeptical about Barry’s painfully obvious crush?”

Bruce smiled. “I’m not skeptical about the crush. When someone does something that extraordinary for you – when they give their life for yours – it’s not always possible to see around that.”

They drank in silence for a minute, and Hal appeared intensely interested in one particular corner of his label. “Thank you, is what I’m trying to say,” Bruce said.

“I thought I said to forget it. Please let’s not—just don’t.”

“As you wish.”

Hal was frowning, and his pluck at the beer label had become a kind of nervous fraying. Bits of the label were floating to the ground in a tiny snow shower. “So,” he said. “There’s, ah. . . something I wanted to ask you about.”

“All right,” Bruce said. “Though if it’s about the chair, I won’t be able to give you the answers you want. I can barely understand a fraction of what I saw, and the fragments I can put into words are almost impossible to comprehend. I shared with you the only real information I can understand.”

“Right, I—I know. Did you tell Clark?”

It was Bruce’s turn to study his beer. “Not yet,” he said. He didn’t know how to explain that one. Why hadn’t he? The easy answer would be that Clark hadn’t sought him out to ask him, and Hal had. Of course, that wasn’t strictly true. Hal hadn’t sought him out to ask about the chair or what he had learned; Hal had sought him out because he was concerned about him. Was still, possibly. Why else would he seek him out now, instead of talking to people whose company he would probably prefer?

“Well,” Hal said. “Anyway. That wasn’t what I—I wasn’t interested in the chair. I mean, I am, obviously, it just wasn’t—wasn’t the thing what I was going to ask you about. I was just—look, you and me, we’re in a good place, right?”

Bruce frowned at him in puzzlement, but Hal plowed on. “In terms of getting along, of our relationship, I mean. Our working relationship. We’re good, right? I mean, better than we started, anyway. We may have had a rocky start, but we—”

“That was never my doing,” Bruce said. 

“Okay, super, you’re twelve. Can you just shut up and let me ask this? And just parenthetically, that is some major historical revision you’ve got going on there, but never mind, I’m gonna let that one go by. The thing is, I. . . have seen some tabloids.”

“All right,” Bruce said. He was beginning to be concerned for Jordan’s state of mind. Nothing he was saying seemed connected, and his speech was not only rambling but erratic. And yet he was fairly certain it was the man’s first beer. 

“And in these tabloid pictures, sometimes I see you. . . having a good time, like at a party or maybe at a beach somewhere, and you are. . . with people. All kinds of people. Really pretty people, a lot of them. Certain. . . types of people, along with certain other types of people, and the thing is, I know a lot of that is an act, it’s all a show for the paparazzi, I get that, so I don’t really know if some of the things I see are because those are the actual types of people you like or not, you see what I’m saying?”

“Jordan, I am not going to help you date a supermodel.”

Hal rubbed at his forehead. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. This is not going well. I just mentioned the tabloids because I didn’t want you to think I was assuming things about you that might not be true, or that might be just a projection of—”

“Hey Hal,” Barry said, sticking his head out the door. “Did you see where I put the—”

“Barry,” Hal said, and his voice sounded like he might be about to crush the beer bottle in his hand and feed the shards of glass to his best friend. 

“What? I was just— _oh_ ,” Barry said, glancing at Bruce. “Oh, right,” he said, and shut the door, ducking quickly out. 

“Anyway,” Hal said, turning back to Bruce. “The thing is, I was wondering if possibly, sometime in the not too distant future, you might like to. . . to. . .”

Bruce was still just frowning at him. The whole experience with Grail must have been harder on him than Bruce had thought, because he was making no sense. Hal went quiet, his sentence trailing off, and he dropped his eyes.

“You know what,” he said, after a minute. “Never mind. That was. . . please just forget it.” And he turned to head back inside, leaving Bruce standing on the balcony wondering what the hell had just happened. Jordan clearly wanted to know something, and just as clearly was afraid of hearing the answer. Was it about what had happened when Bruce had put on the ring? Was Jordan worried that he had established some bond with the ring? Was there residual telepathic information in the ring, and was Jordan trying to find out if he had seen something he should not have? 

“Hold up,” Bruce called, but Hal had gone. Bruce went inside, but Hal had quickly disappeared. There was a knot of Lanterns by the TV, and John was talking loudly about graphic design specifications, and Barry tried to shove a plate of nachos at him. “Hey, Bruce,” Clark called, but Bruce ignored him, pushing to the front door.

He trotted down the outside stairs to the parking lot. Hal was already by his car, his keys in his hand. The late afternoon light was turning Hal’s hair almost golden, was warming every corner of the grim little lot. “Jordan,” Bruce said. “Hold up a minute.”

“Bruce,” he said. “Look, I need to get home. I’ve got some early flights tomorrow, I have to—”

“Bullshit. You wanted to ask me something, so ask it.”

“I asked you to forget it.”

“It was clearly important, or you wouldn’t have brought it up. You were the one who said we’re in a good place, but obviously that’s not true if you can’t be bothered to speak your mind to me.”

“Right, you just love it when people speak their mind,” Hal muttered.

“When have I ever asked you not to express your opinion?”

“Oh, I don’t know, every time you’ve ever said _shut up, Lantern?_ Maybe then?”

“And why are you acting like a petulant child right now?”

“A child? I’m acting like a _child_?” Hal slammed the open car door.

“Yes, in fact. Whatever it was you wanted to ask me—“

“Out!” Hal shouted, and Bruce stared at him. 

“Out of what?” he said. 

“ _Out_ , was what I wanted to ask you, you idiot.”

“You. . . I don’t understand. Ask me out of where?”

“Un-fucking-believable,” Hal said. “This is like some nightmare version of who’s on first. Goodnight, I’m going home,” and he reached for his car door again. And then all the lights came on in Bruce’s brain, and he slammed his hand firmly against Hal’s car door, keeping it closed.

“Ask me _out_ ,” he said. “You’re kidding.”

“Apparently not,” Hal said. He shut his eyes. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please, for the love of bleeding fuck, can we forget about it.”

But Bruce’s brain was racing. He saw Hal glaring daggers at Barry, and Barry’s quick retreat. It hadn’t been a momentary impulse, on Hal’s part. It had been planned. Rehearsed, even. The man’s jaw was so tight Bruce could see the clench of muscle in it. Bruce lifted his hand off the car door. 

“You can’t honestly be interested in me,” Bruce said quietly, and Hal opened his eyes, studied Bruce. He had not calculated how close they were standing.

“Bruce,” Hal said. He dropped his eyes again. There seemed to be a lot in his name, when Hal said it. “I’m. . . a bit beyond interested, is the thing.”

Hal Jordan thought about him sexually. Hal Jordan was interested in him. Hal Jordan wanted him. It was like being in the chair again, thoughts and feelings and sensations whizzing by too fast for him to catalog any of them, too fast for him catch at any of them. “You were asking about my sexuality,” Bruce said. “Because you’d seen paparazzi pics of me with some men, and you were wondering if I was just bi for the cameras.”

“I. . . yeah. I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

“I know. Hal, I’m beyond interested too. I just didn’t know it was a possibility.”

Hal’s quick brown eyes were on his. Was he allowed to acknowledge now how beautiful the man was? Was that something he could let himself think? He wondered what someone watching them would think. They were definitely standing too close. There was a small smile on Jordan’s face, and it flickered in his eyes. 

“So if I asked you to dinner,” Hal was saying softly, “you might say yes.”

“Hal. If you asked me, I would say yes to pretty much anything.”

Hal’s eyes were still watching him. Bruce saw those eyes flick to his lips. Bruce’s heart began a triphammer beat. He wasn’t sure if he was the one leaning closer, or if Hal was. Hal put a hand on his waist. It was a warm hand, and Bruce could feel it through his thin shirt. But then Hal didn’t move closer; he leaned instead to cover the small distance between them, and brushed his lips on Bruce’s. It was a careful kiss. They were careful of each other. Hal’s lips were on his. Hal’s tongue, gentle against his own. Hal’s mouth. Certain things Bruce was sure of ten minutes ago, he was no longer sure of. For one thing, he had been pretty sure that of all the things he was likely to do in life, shove someone into the backseat of a car in a more or less crowded parking lot and climb on top of them was not something he would do. He was no longer at all sure of that. Hal’s tongue was rearranging all sorts of things. 

Hal had pulled off and was just looking at him. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. 

“Me too,” Bruce said. 

“Can we—”

“Yes,” Bruce said, and leaned in again. His mouth wanted only Hal’s, wanted to taste the warm gingery something lurking there, wanted Hal’s chapped lips brushing his own again. The hand on his waist hadn’t moved, but the fingers were digging deeper. He imagined that hand on his bare flesh. 

“Get in my car,” Bruce husked. “Come home with me.”

Hal made a small noise in his throat. He shook his head against Bruce’s. Their foreheads were leaning together. “No,” he said. “What the fuck are you trying to do to me. Let me do this right, I want to do this right.”

“Hal,” Bruce said, letting every bit of his want into the tremolo of his voice, and Hal’s hand slid to the back of his neck, pulled him in harder, and now they were pressed against each other and kissing again. 

“Fuck,” Hal panted. “I have to get in this car.”

It was as though his body and his brain had not been communicating for some time, which was perfectly plausible. His brain had not known that this was what his body wanted. Or had his body not known that this was what his brain wanted, and only now was it learning? Because it felt like all the lights had come on in his body at once, every circuit alive, whole neural networks he hadn’t known existed. He had Hal pressed against his car, and their kissing had almost become biting, it was so fierce. “Sorry,” Bruce said suddenly, lifting his head. 

“Sorry for—what?” Hal was panting a bit, and he looked disoriented.

“You said you had to get in the car. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to. . . push you.”

“Well why the fuck not,” Hal said, and he tugged Bruce back in. He also tugged other parts of Bruce closer, and now their hips were snug against each other, and that was definitely a hardening cock pushing against his own, in between their jeans. Bruce got a hand on the back of Hal’s neck and angled his mouth better, and just fucked him with his tongue. He could feel Hal’s moan around it, the slow collapse of his spine back into the car.

“So you, ah, oh Jesus,” Hal gasped, “seem to be rapidly— _fuck_ —making your peace with this idea, yeah?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you could explain more fully.”

“Listen closely,” Hal said, and seized Bruce’s mouth in his while beginning a slow grind up against Bruce’s bulge. He curled strong hands around Bruce’s ass, and Bruce tore his mouth off Hal’s for a second, because what had been fun and games about twenty seconds ago was now becoming something else, and the possibility he was about to embarrass himself in a parking lot in front of someone he really, really did not want to embarrass himself in front of had just reared its ugly head.

“Possibility A,” Hal murmured in his ear. “We get in my car and get each other off. Possibility B, we get to your car and get each other off. Possibility C, one of us develops super speed and we zoom back inside Clark’s apartment and commandeer the guest room.”

“Or D,” Bruce whispered back. “We develop some self-control.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s going well.”

They were kissing again, grinding, and there was a low steady groan in Hal’s throat that was the most fucking delicious sound Bruce had ever heard, and he bit at Hal’s throat to try to get at the sound, and then kissed his way up his jaw and back to his wicked wicked mouth. “Hey Hal,” called a woman’s voice from the stairway by Clark’s apartment. “Do you know where Barry put the—shit, sorry!” 

They froze where they were. They heard the bang of Clark’s front door, and the quiet of the parking lot. “Jessica,” Hal murmured. “Holy shit.” But Bruce laughed. 

“Think about it,” he said. “She’s the new kid. She’s going to go back in there and try to make them believe she just saw the two of us making out in the parking lot. They’re going to think she’s drunk, or delusional.”

“Nah,” Hal said. “She’s cool, she won’t say anything.” Hal had leaned his forehead against Bruce’s. The gesture was so intimate, so lovely that it made Bruce’s chest tight with something unnameable. “But seriously,” he was saying. “I do have to get in this car.”

Bruce nodded, a small scrape of his forehead against Hal’s. Hal’s hand brushed against the side of his face. “Dinner tomorrow?” he whispered. 

“A better idea,” Bruce said, and he straightened, tried to look like he had not just been obliterated by five minutes in a parking lot. “We meet for a late dinner, as soon as I can get away from here. Assuming you were lying about those early flights, that is.”

“I wasn’t, but I don’t give a shit. Tonight, you think?”

“I think.”

“Because I told myself I was gonna do this the right way.”

“It’s just dinner,” Bruce said, and he allowed himself a quirk of brow, and he saw the answering smirk tucked in the corner of Hal’s delicious mouth. Fifteen minutes ago he had not known that mouth was delicious. Had not let himself think it.

“Just dinner, huh. Is that what the kids are calling it. All right, text me when you’re done. We’ll figure it out.” 

Bruce stood aside to let Hal get in his car and spin away out of the little lot, and by common consent they did not touch again, because that would only take them one place, and they both seemed to know it. Whatever happened, the next time he had his hands on Hal Jordan, he would not stop until they were both satisfied. And in some dark corner of his brain he wondered if he could have persuaded Hal to Possibility E, which was that he drag Hal to a shadowed niche behind some overgrown bushes and sink to his knees and suck him off, right there in the parking lot, Hal probably hissing obscenities and trying not to be too loud and digging his fingers into Bruce’s shoulders. 

_I’m a bit beyond interested,_ Jordan had said. He could still feel that knocking around his chest, and in some places quite a bit lower. He ought to go back up to Clark’s party, make some pleasant small talk, try to be a gracious guest, only his cock seemed not to be obliging. He could not go back up with a raging boner, especially not if Jessica Cruz had been less than circumspect – but something told him Hal’s judgment on that was correct. 

_Beyond interested._

The thing about that was, “beyond interested” implied a chronology. It meant Jordan had been thinking about this, for a long time. How long was a long time? For that matter, how long had he himself been pointedly _not_ thinking about it? 

He headed slowly up the stairs, concentrating firmly on thinking about Darkseid’s hideous cracked skin with every step—anything but the sun-baked warm of Jordan’s skin, the smooth heat of his tongue, the way he had pressed his fingers into Bruce’s waist. Anything but the miracle of the last half hour of his life. He hadn’t believed, sitting in that chair, feeling its inexorable pull, that he would ever know anything of life again. And here he had been handed not just any life, but this miraculous thing that could not possibly be his life, where this sort of thing happened. For a dizzying half-second he was afraid it was all a hallucinatory trick of the chair, and he would call Jordan and the man would have no memory of what had just happened between them, because it never was, he was an idiot, he was still lost in some vortex of time and sensation, it was not real, not true, it couldn’t possibly be. 

On the second floor landing he acknowledged defeat and sat down, pulling out his phone. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Jordan said.

“Nothing. Turns out the party wrapped up sooner than I thought it would, is all.”

“Oh yeah, that so?” He could hear the grin in Hal’s voice. “Well what a shame, I guess you’d better get out of there then. Feel like a ride?”

“In what sense were you offering?”

He had the reward of the low rich thrum of Jordan’s laugh. “For _that_ line,” he said, “I’m gonna run every traffic light in the next three blocks. Don’t move, I’ll be back there in two minutes.”

“I’ll be right here,” Bruce said, and clicked off his phone.

* * *


	2. . . . .and a bit beyond that.

Hal woke to an insistent thrum which he tried to ignore. He knew it was his phone, but he had no real idea where exactly his phone was (hint: somewhere it could make that fucking annoying vibrating noise on the wood floor) and the likelihood was that whoever it was would just give up in a few minutes anyway. Except that wasn’t what happened, of course. The phone did this thing where the buzzing would stop for a few minutes, and Hal would start to let his eyes drift shut again, and then _bzzzzz bzzzzzz bzzzzz_ it would start in all over again, and oh my fucking God. So he began a slow crawl to the edge of the bed to see if he could find it under some pile of clothes, and that was a whole other set of problems, because there was a significant obstruction between himself and the edge of the bed that had decidedly not been there the last time he had slept in this bed. 

“What are you doing,” came the low growl, when Hal gave up and just basically crawled over him. 

“Trying to get my phone, can you seriously not move like a millimeter here?”

“’M sleeping,” said the growl, and Hal sighed.

“Fuck’s sake, you are built like a brick shithouse, you know that right?” There was a bluish glow underneath a pile of what appeared to be pants, and Hal’s fingertips grazed the pile. He stretched some more and his fingers closed on the phone. Fucking Barry. Of fucking course. By the time he had retrieved the phone and settled back on the bed – another low growl as Hal dragged himself back across the warm mountain of muscle next to him – the phone had of course stopped buzzing. So maybe Barry was giving up. Of course there were nine thousand unread text messages, and one guess who all those were from. As he was squinting at them in the dark the phone started buzzing again. 

“Hey,” Hal said quietly into the phone, but there was still an overly dramatic sigh from next to him and an ostentatiously irritated shift away. _Now_ he moved.

“Hal? Are you all right? I’ve been calling all night, you didn’t answer my texts, and you just disappeared from the party, and I didn’t know what to—Jesus Christ, I am so sorry man, I know I fucked up, I just didn’t think, I am so so sorry, what can I do to make this right, I just wasn’t thinking I guess, and I didn’t even _see_ him out on the balcony with you, so I thought that—”

“Barry? What the hell are you talking about? You are aware it’s three o’clock in the goddamn morning, right?”

A heavy sigh on the other end. “I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep. Hal, seriously, tell me we’re okay. I know I fucked things up for you.”

Hal gave a quiet laugh. “Bar. You didn’t fuck up.”

“I didn’t?”

“No. For real. It was fine.”

“Oh yeah? Like. . . how fine?”

“Like, fine fine.” There was another shift beside him, and Bruce rolled so he was facing him. In the light from the phone he caught the movement of Bruce’s eyes, which were open now, and watching him. 

“So did you tell him? Did you say the thing?”

“I said. . . some of the thing.”

“Are you serious? You really did it?”

“Bar. Is there any way we can talk about this in the morning? If you want we could—”

“No way man, you are telling me now. You have to tell me what happened. What did he do? Did he punch you? Are you okay? Was it bad? Do you need medical attention?”

“No, it was not _bad_ , and why is that your first assumption? Weren’t you the one telling me to do it? If you thought I was going to get punched, why would you be encouraging me?”

“Wait, it _wasn’t_ bad? Like, how not bad?”

Beside him, he felt Bruce scooting a bit closer. A heavy arm across his middle pulled him closer, and there was a warm mouth at his shoulder. Hal smiled. “Not bad as in, I have to go now.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You are fucking shitting me.”

“Good night, Barry.”

“YOU ARE FUCKING SHITTING ME WAIT WAIT WAIT ARE YOU KIDDING DO NOT HANG UP ON ME WHAT THE FU—” Hal clicked the phone off, and tucked it on the shelf above his headboard. He rolled into the arms next to him. 

“Sorry,” he whispered. “But he tends not to stop. I had to take that.”

“Mmm,” Bruce rumbled, and Hal realized he was only half-awake at best. He was pulling Hal in closer and tighter, and look at that, he had forgotten for a few seconds there was six-feet-and-change of hot as fuck muscled gorgeousness lying in his bed, and would you also look at that, Bruce Wayne was a snuggler. Hal tucked his head into Bruce’s shoulder and just went with it. 

“Some of the thing?” Bruce murmured into his hair. So maybe more awake than he had thought.

“Well, there was more. I had more prepared, in my head.”

“Mm. Hard to imagine what that would have been like.”

“What are you talking about, I was great.”

“It was a terrible speech. I thought you were having a psychotic break. There were parts where you were actively on fire.”

Hal laughed, and the arms tightened around him. Any tighter and he was going to start having trouble breathing. “Hey, I’d like to see you do better. And it got the job done.”

“I got the job done.”

“Well I got it started, which is more than you were ever gonna do.”

Bruce shifted, mainly so he could tuck Hal more firmly in his arms. Hal breathed in the scent of his neck, pressed against the firm length of his body. How could one person be this gorgeous? “True,” Bruce said, and they rested in the silence and dark of Hal’s bed. There was a half-empty fried rice take-out container resting on the radiator, because after a few hours of the fiercest fucking of his life they had acknowledged that yes, food might actually be a good thing. So that dinner date had sort of happened after all, even if in his head they had been wearing more clothes when he had imagined it. But then he would have missed out on Bruce sitting cross-legged on his bed, naked as the day he was born, picking through take-out Chinese with his chopsticks to find the water chestnuts. 

“Goddammit,” sighed Hal. “I gave it up on the first date. I was gonna play hard to get.”

“You were,” Bruce whispered, and they lay there, slipping back into quiet and sleep. Or maybe Bruce was. Hal’s mind was racing. He had come so close, so fucking close to not being able to save Bruce, so close to being too late. His own probable death had felt like nothing, compared to the terror he had felt for Bruce. He didn’t realize he was digging his fingers into Bruce’s arm, probably to the point of pain, until Bruce shifted.

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Come here.” They were kissing in the dark now, but quietly, not frantic like before. If he had thought Bruce’s kisses were sweet when they were both cranked and aching for it, it was because he hadn’t known what Bruce’s kisses were like in the soft middle of the night. Only then he had to go and ruin it by getting slowly hard, and he tried to shift away a bit, just surreptitiously, so Bruce wouldn’t know. Time enough for Bruce to confront just how high that sex drive really was, and he did not feel like a joke about being a sex-crazed maniac or something like that, even it if was kind of true. 

“Turn around,” Bruce whispered, and Hal complied, and there was still a firm arm anchoring him, holding him close, but Bruce’s right hand slid down to Hal’s thickening traitorous cock. He didn’t say anything, just slowly stroked, never speeding up, long firm strokes until Hal shook and gasped, leaking his pleasure onto Bruce’s fingers. He had almost come apart, because Bruce would not go faster, and Hal had twisted in his arms and choked out “please baby faster I need it faster fuck fuck please,” but Bruce was a sadistic bastard who had ignored him, and the iron grip on his middle had not let him move. His orgasm had been right on the edge of pain. 

Afterward Bruce wiped his hand on the sheet, and wiped Hal, and kissed his neck. The arms holding him were even tighter, if possible. Hal shifted his ass so he could feel the hot length of Bruce’s cock nestled against it. Bruce began fucking against his backside, and Hal shifted his leg just a bit so Bruce’s cock could slide in between his thighs. Bruce fucked him there, in that tight grip of flesh, and he was fast, and his breath on Hal’s neck was loud. He came in long quiet shudders that dripped onto Hal’s balls and down his thighs. He could have wiped himself, but he didn’t want to. 

They did drift back to sleep after that, until the next buzz of Hal’s phone. Somehow he had forgotten to turn it all the way off. Bruce didn’t even open his eyes—just reached a hand up and found the phone with unerring aim, and hurled it right through the open doorway to shatter on the exposed brick in the hallway. This without opening his eyes or really moving. “Motherfucker,” Hal hissed. “You fucking motherfucker.”

“Bill me,” he murmured, and rolled over, taking Hal more or less with him. 

“Oh you better believe I will.”

“Mm,” Bruce rumbled, and promptly went back to sleep. Hal was going to get up and find Bruce’s phone and text every single one of his contacts, _Hal Jordan’s dick is HUGE!!! and I love to swallow it._ Just as soon as he got up from this bed. Any minute now. Any minute, he would get up. 

Soon. 

He burrowed back into those arms and fell back into dreamless sleep, anchored in the dark.


End file.
